The story of The Hermitage

The Hermitage is a state heritage-listed house in Pennant Avenue, Denistone.

John Blaxland (son of the explorer and owner of Brush Farm House, Gregory Blaxland) purchased 5 acres of land in 1838. Blaxland built the house for his family and it was completed in 1841. John Blaxland was known as the hermit, within the family and so the house was named The Hermitage. The house is a rare survivor from the early settlement period of Ryde. 

Built for and lived in by John and Ellen Blaxland and their family, it was one of three major properties associated the Blaxlands in the current Ryde Local Government Area. Gregory and Elizabeth Blaxland built Brush Farm House, Lawson Street, Eastwood. Their son Charles, built Cleves (now demolished) in Putney and another son John, built the Hermitage.

David Theodore Field Nicholson married Winifred Elinor Broughton Young on 24 November 1920 in Queensland. On 28 May 1923 they purchased The Hermitage at 2 Anzac Avenue, Denistone. This consisted of a house on a sizeable block of land of 2 acres 3 roods.

Five of their six children were born in Ryde including Elinor Catherine (known as Catherine) on 24 January 1924.

In her autobiography The hospital by the river: a story of hope, she recalls

We lived in a large house in Ryde called the Hermitage. Built in 1842 by John Blaxland, son of the explorer Gregory Blaxland …

When I was a child the house seemed huge, with endless rooms and a big attic in which we could crawl about and play with all the old junk that had accumulated over the years. There were eight bedrooms. The upstairs attic rooms were rather poky, but my father had gable windows put in and then we had a beautiful view all the way down to the Parramatta River. Downstairs, the rooms were wood-pannelled, and there were wide verandahs in the front and back of the house. The garden was my mother’s special interest and delight. It was beautiful, and, to me, the most perfect garden I have ever been in.

Her book provides many more details of her life at The Hermitage, so too, a booklet called The Hermitage: memories of the 1930s. This was edited by Pauline Curby from the oral history of one of Catherine’s brothers, Peter Nicholson.

At the age of 12, she, along with her elder sister Sheila were sent to Frensham, a girls’ boarding school in Mittagong. In her last year at school she decided she wanted to be a doctor. After she matriculated, she lived at home, at The Hermitage, and studied medicine at the University of Sydney.

In 1946, at the age of 22, she graduated and worked as an intern first at St John’s Hospital, Auburn and later the St George Hospital, Kogarah. After two years she applied for a resident’s position at Crown Street Women’s Hospital in Surry Hills and had an interview with the medical superintendent Dr Reginald Hamlin.

Reg and Catherine married in 1950 and had a son in 1952. In 1959 they travelled to Ethiopia, initially accepting a three year contract but would stay there their entire lives, opening the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in 1974.

The Hermitage stayed in Nicholson ownership until April 1952 when it was transferred to the Commonwealth of Australia. The house and land eventually became the CSIRO Division of Wool Technology.

The Hermitage was purchased by CSIRO in 1952 from Mr DT Nicholson. It became one of three CSIRO Wool Research Laboratories and in 1958 became a separate division and was named the Division of Textile Physics. The Hermitage and its surrounds stayed in Commonwealth Hands until 1999, when CSIRO rationalised its properties in the Ryde area. 

After this the house was restored and reverted to the function for which it was built: as a home.